The Nation’s Stepchildren

The eagerly awaited salary increase for the civil service has at long last been announced. It didn’t disappoint - the overriding view among the civil service is that the amount of increase is well within their expectations. That is all hunky dory – the questions that now beg answers to, are:

a.  Is the country likely to see increased efficiency in the civil service, as a consequence?

b.  Can we hope that it will help arrest the exodus of human capital out of the country?

Although the answers to the above two questions are a foregone conclusion, let us give it the benefit of doubt - and keep it mute for the moment. For all we know, it could very well happen. Then again, it could remain a pipe dream - only time will tell.

But what is said to be as certain as day and night - is the customary inflation that the salary raise is guaranteed to usher in, in its wake.

And this is where the larger citizenry find themselves being dealt an unfair deal - the fact that every time the bureaucracy finds itself in the mood - they have the luxury to dip their fingers into public funds; at will, and without so much as by your leave. And, as if they were the children of lesser Gods, the private sector employees are left wondering what their sin had been.

It is time that the government reassess its current viewshed of the private sector. It should realize that the private sector is not the stepson of the country - on the contrary, it is the able bodied Atlas who helps prop up the nation’s pillar of growth and progress.